


give you all my hours

by TolkienGirl



Series: Swan Songs - Emma Swan Character Studies [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s01e07 A Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Episode: s01e08 Desperate Souls, F/M, Gen, Gremma was a good ship that died too soon, Trauma, death descriptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 10:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16514303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: It wasn't ready to be love, but isn't it enough to be a reason?





	give you all my hours

It takes a long time for her to remember: she should call 911.

She slips her cellphone out of her pocket and opens it with one hand. The other doesn’t leave him. He’s still warm.

He isn’t breathing. Emma hacks out another sob, and dials.

Graham’s phone rings on the desk.

 

Right.

There are no saviors in this town, unless Henry is to be believed. There is a ghostly hospital and a one-man police station.

And that one man is dead.

 

There is no blood on the floor. She almost wishes that there was. That if he had to die, it wouldn’t be so clean, so sudden. Nothing but his limbs at reckless angles and his head lolling in her lap.

Emma folds her fingers over his lips, and doesn’t stop crying.

He kissed her with that mouth. He kissed her and he thanked her and Emma is a curse, isn’t she? She can’t run away fast enough to keep anyone.

 

When the coroner comes, he notices that one of Graham’s bootlaces is missing. Emma doesn’t tell him that it’s knotted and rolled in the pocket of her jeans. Emma doesn’t tell him much of anything, this man with the face of a shovel ( _one of the seven dwarves_ , Henry’s voice whispers in her ear). Just that Sheriff Graham seems to have suffered from a heart attack. Seems to, but she’s no expert.

She’s no expert. She felt him burning with fever, and let his fingers caress the cut along her brow. She heard him tell Regina he didn’t want her anymore, and let her heart believe that Graham wanting _her_ instead would be enough.

 

Regina.

It’s always Regina.

Emma doesn’t have much, doesn’t have anything, really, but a hunch. She clenches her blunt nails into her palm and swears vengeance.

(He kissed softly, sweetly. She doesn’t get close to anyone, not closer, at least, than a one-night stand, but this time—)

Mary Margaret tells her she has a wall. Tells her that wall will keep out pain. Well either the wall is good for shit or Emma is, because pain found its way in, twisting razorblade fingers against her too-thin skin.

 

There is so much Mary Margaret doesn’t know.

But then, too, there’s so much that Emma doesn’t know—how long she’ll stay, and how many reasons she will stay for. Henry, first and foremost…but now the dead man whose funeral she goes to with her tongue pinched between her teeth.  

It wasn’t ready to be love, but isn’t it enough to be a reason?

Wasn’t he enough?

 

When Gold offers her a way forward, she throws her caution to the wind (to the wall), and takes it.


End file.
